Issue #4

Project managers are often the first—and main—touchpoints across teams, clients, and disciplines on a digital project. I’ve talked a lot about the importance of communication in project management, but there's more to it than setting expectations and communicating statuses. As project managers, we have a unique window into the experiences of all teams and stakeholders on a project. We can (and should) educate as we communicate, and take advantage of this insight we have on the spectrum of project perspectives.

Educating our clients and stakeholders
Clients come to us for project work because we (our teams, ourselves, our companies) are the experts in a particular piece of knowledge. We can build trust and confidence in our work by educating through our communication whenever possible.

How to apply this:

• Talk to clients and stakeholders about the importance of discovery on a project and how it can save time and money.
• Discuss the ideas of content debt with content managers on web projects and how this type of debt leads to larger project costs overall.
• Set expectations associated with technical or design decisions on projects in an open, honest, but authoritative manner.

Educating our teams while we work
We trust in ourselves, teams, and our processes to deliver the best possible solutions and knowledge across teams to solve a client problem. Applying an introspective look at our internal processes helps deliver better solutions.

How to apply this:

• Never talk trash about clients. Realistically approach and talk about less-than-ideal issues and work together to understand the root causes.
• Take time to understand the core principles your team keeps. Work with your teams to find a way to make client needs align with core principles.
• Bring teams together to demystify their work and cut down on jargon for project work and presentations.

Educating ourselves and each other
Whether we're the sole DPMs on our team or one of a few, we still regularly learn and grow on the job. Applying education-centric thinking to our own communication practice helps us take into account more perspectives.

How to apply this:

• Think about our work having a longer-term impact than just one project and approach project planning with this in mind.
• Consider the ways we can lead our teams to incorporate new techniques and solutions on projects.
• Ask questions and say "I don't know" regularly if we are unsure of a process—and then ask someone with more knowledge to help us learn.

• More ways to say "I don't know" as a manager, from The Muse.
• There are no clients from hell, a somewhat brash and good read.
• How to make the web better, an article I wrote awhile back about how we treat our clients.